No, it's not pornography. But it's not for the squeamish, either. And it is legit. I first heard about this clip two years ago, and if a friend hadn't passed it along I never would have known that it was available for public viewing.
You've probably seen enactments of this in movies and television. But this - a very rare and early film shot in a prison in Hanoi, Vietnam - depicts the real thing.
What is it?
The executions of two prisoners by guillotine... with the camera showing the heads falling into the basket.
Two things that strike me as I watch this. The first is how rapidly each execution is carried out (in consideration of how fast the film is progressing). Various dramatic presentations have it as something of a drawn-out affair of bringing the condemned to the guillotine, then lowered into position and a wait of several moments before the blade drops. Here we see how it usually happened: from the time the prisoner was brought to the machine, execution usually took place less than 30 seconds later. Which I assume was a good thing, and didn't give the prisoner much time to dwell on being placed inside such a contraption... especially one with a razor poised to slice off his or her noggin.
The second thing which surprised me very much is how much of a recoil there is from the blade after it finishes dropping. Every time I've seen the guillotine used in a movie, the blade descends and then stops abruptly as if there were no real inertia. But as we see in this footage, the blade bounces quite a few times before finally coming to rest. Probably indicates some kind of "shock absorbing" mechanism, 'cuz otherwise the guillotine would likely tear itself apart after a small amount of use.
It's not the most gruesome thing that I've seen as a historian (I've looked at stuff from the Nazi era that most people don't even know exists and for their sake I hope they never do) but I'll admit: there's some horrible fascination at seeing such a legendary device carrying out its function.
0 comments:
Post a Comment